Posts Tagged ‘icewind dale’

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There is a man, I like to think, a man named Dale. His cool demeanour is known throughout his small home town in the American Midwest. Now, Dale’s not unfriendly by any means, he just doesn’t have time for idle chit-chat. He mostly comes into town on business, breezing through with a tip of his hat. Icewind Dale, they call him. Dale doesn’t understand why he’s seeing online ads calling him Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition. And he’s out now? Heck, Dale’s been out since the Nixon administration.

No Dale, you silly goose! Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is a revamped re-release of Black Isle Studios’ old Infinity Engine RPG from 2000, and it launched yesterday.

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They don’t make ’em like the old days, but they do revamp and remake ’em like the new days. After fancying up BioWare’s two olde Baldur’sGate games with Enhanced Editions, Beamdog have now turned their revitalising eye to another Infinity Engine classic. Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is a shiny new version of the fantasy RPG by venerated Fallout creators Black Isle Studios, with a reworked UI, new quests, items, and spells, plus six-player cross-platform co-op multiplayer.

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We’re not the world’s biggest fans of these traditionally sturctured fantasy MMOs, but Neverwinter is a rare exception. The game lured John into its embrace and cradled him there in a pleasing rhythm of free-to-play questing, levelling and monster-bashing for the length of a three-part diary series. That’s old age, in RPS-diary years.

So maybe you’re already playing it on John’s recommendation, or maybe you saw yesterday’s news about the Icewind Dale expansion and decided it was finally time to give it a try. In any case, we’ve got 10,000 free keys for an in-game booster pack, in case you needed an extra excuse to finally hit download, install and play.

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It’s been a good decade since Black Isle last took us to Icewind Dale, so how’d you fancy a return visit? This isn’t the noughties anymore, mind, so you may find the whole experience a mite different to those old turn-based RPGs. Curse of Icewind Dale, the third big free update for Cryptic’s free-to-play Neverwinter, launched yesterday to add new zones set in the chilly land and more modern MMORPG merriment.

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Hmm. Well, this came out of nowhere. OK, not entirely nowhere – we are living in the age of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Wasteland 2, and talk of a new Planescape: Torment, after all – but I can’t say I was expecting Black Isle to just suddenly explode out of the suspiciously human-sized birthday cake that is life. And yet, here we are. Black Isle Studios is apparently back. I mean, look at that picture. It’s as clear as day.

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Generally, it’s pretty cringe-inducing to watch publishers get ahead of themselves. “Annual sequels, comic book tie-ins, and a movie deal that will pass across the desk of at least one noteworthy director before getting indefinitely shelved,” they excitedly proclaim. Then things inevitably don’t go as planned, and everyone has a good, long sob. I want to believe Beamdog when it says Baldur’s Gate 3 is more than just a Kickstarter-fueled delusion of grandeur, though. And what’s this about Icewind Dale? I mean, what’s even left to be looted from Black Isle’s naked corpse? Planescape? Lionheart? OK, maybe we can just not take Lionheart.